Did the 2nd Annual Dewey Beach Arts Festival (juried) last weekend with my hand-poured scented soy candles as my product. This is my craft business which supports my fine art show habit. So please don't make fun of a product which generates twice as much revenue as my award-winning fine art paintings...
The scheduled Saturday show date was an off-and-on stormy rain-out and thankfully show management called off the event via text and e-mail very, very, early in the AM after apparently staying up late to watch the weather (I got both - just before I headed out the door at 5 AM for my 7 AM set-up time)
Sadly some folks read the Friday e-mail which said things were a "GO", but forgot that the e-mail also said check your e-mail before you leave on show day as things might change with the weather. So a few folks showed up on Saturday after a several hour ride to find the show called due to weather - and then checked their e-mail and texts...............
The scheduled rain date was the day following and after a damp set-up, the weather turned sunny, warmed up and was beautiful.... A perfect Mother's Day - unless you're related to Mother Nature....... There was music, kids art and activities, some free food, fine art, photography, craft and jewelry.
I saw a 'professional' tent rental company come in and rebar-stake a rental tent right into the asphalt of a town street...I was wondering why the underground utilities were marked....now I knew why... Couldn't believe I was watching this guy sledging rebar through the asphalt.. knowing there was a natural gas line running down his side of the street. The underground utilities mark-outs are only so accurate (as I know from my environmental geology days of drilling monitoring wells in urban settings) and you just don't go punching rebar into the asphalt several feet without a whole lot more information on the utilities.... Reviewed the show rules - there was nothing in there about staking in the street.........
Unfortunately, this beautiful weather was due to a frontal boundary passing through with very closely spaced isobars (this means it's gonna get real windy) The winds got to sustained 20-30 mph with higher gusts and they called the show 1/2 hr early...
To my knowledge, despite a preponderance of EZ-ups, nobody had any tent flying/collapsing/sailing - and this is because show management stressed bringing lots of weight. They also helped lots of folks, including me break down in the gale... I had over 200 lbs of weight on my tent and it was still pushing it around - but not picking it up. Part of this was having my sidewalls up which kept the wind out from under the canopy top, but still acted as a sail.
As Robert has said elsewhere - rubber feet on your tent legs are essential to keeping skidding to a minimum when on pavement, but this doesn't help if your pavement is getting covered with blowing sand.
The event was juried during the application process and was judged onsite, with ribbons and gift certificates being awarded to the winners. Several jewelers said there was too much jewelry (a more common lament these days - yet lots of jewelers keep applying to events and juries keep overloading the category - but that's an entirely different discussion).
Sales were slow to start happening. Part of this was due to the weather changeover from marginal to beautiful and part of this was waiting for church services and Mother's Day brunches to be completed. I saw lots of packages being carried about; including lots of stuff with frames. Despite the slow start, rain date, and slightly early close, my sales were as good as the year before - which isn't outstanding, but I covered costs and made a profit.... I had multiple repeat business customers who had seen me at other events and had an events planner make an inquiry about wholesale... (Yay!) There's nothing like having people stand at your booth and praise your products to other potential buyers... You can't buy this sort of advertising for a consumable craft item - especially if you aren't kettle corn, corn-dogs, or sugared nuts
Show management (made up of local business people - The Dewey Beach Business Partnership) was competent, helpful and were looking out for the artists and artisans. They get good marks for keeping everyone well informed about the weather-related cancellation and showed good judgement in calling the event because of weather.
Do the show again? Yup. Howard Alan quality event - nope. Easy set-up and windy teardown. Well attended for a second-annual in a pre-season beach town. Well publicized in the area, but not in Wilmington, DE or Philadelphia to my knowledge. Wouldn't do this one yet with high-end high-priced items - I think there's a limited market for this at this event still.... However, I may bring my art and my craft next year to this event... This event has potential if management keeps working on it as they have for the first two events...
What could they fix? Hmm... They could work on the maintenance of the venue - by having better provisions for puddle problems for the next time... but they did ok considering the situation they were handed
